Review: The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas

"It's a cliché because it's true" goes a cliché. Yet as National Review powerhouse and American Enterprise Institute fellow Jonah Goldberg demonstrates in his new book The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, many of the oft-repeated phrases and dicta utilized by the left are grounded in myth or complete falsehood, which is very appropriate given how the left uses them.
For instance, did you know that Marie Antoinette never said, "Let them eat cake"? That Voltaire never said, "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"? That there is no record even of Edmund Burke having said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"?
Goldberg's revelations are meant not to compile an interesting batch of factoids to drop at dinner parties, but to illustrate his thesis: the left employs clichés in order to cloak its ruthless, ruinous ideological aims in the language of...(Read Full Article)